Plantagenet Penguinista

...which is about right for a half-dose of 4.3.2.1; & if someone as big & ugly as I am can achieve super-model status, then surely there’s hope for you? (-: Thanks once more to the wonderful one who prompted me to use the stuff!

This fascinating picture of Mars’ surface has much to say. Point by point, the commentator makes it blindingly obvious that these formations were made by plasma, not meteoroids, dust, or other more pedestrian methods. Methinks astronomy is due for a few more revolutions than even Immanuel had in mind for it. (-:

It seems that an honest conversation, if it’s one-way only, allows the other person to freely misinterpret what you say, confuse key issues, & selectively copy out portions of what you did actually say, & present those portions as evidence against you before others. The stunning thing is that this can happen completely without malice, as an essentially “self-defensive” measure. That’s a refreshing change from the last few years’ abuse, betrayal, lies & insanity — & it appears to have been a wholly honest mistake — but it’s still hard to take. In this particular case, it’s come as the single biggest emotional hit I’ve taken in 17 years. That’s particularly sad as I enjoy(ed) the other person’s company immensely. More than immensely. Doubly sad as it completely axes one possible option for immediate accommodation here in Perth. It’s a fairly complete antithesis to the excellent reactions I’ve had from essentially random acquaintances recently. Sigh. It would be nice if th

OK, Monday’s work was at a place which likes Dilbert so much that they use the cartoon site as a browser home-page. This is definitely with tongue ensconced firmly in cheek, as Dilbertisms happen both thereabout & to the people they support. (-: One of their support people is Michael C ( “the prophet” or “who is like God?” ), who enjoys ramping people up, but does it gently enough to get away with it. Completely uproots any idea of the office becoming safely boring. (-:

Uh, should also mention work. I’ve literally got too much to do — two full days booked (bloke concerned is taking his family to Phuket from tomorrow, poor blighter, likes Thai food & all, kids drinking from glasses with little umbrellas? :-), plus another one (maybe Wednesday) plus another half somewhere, so I’m definitely going to blow my 15 hour budget this week. On top of this, I need to find & move into a new residence. Glad I have a scanner, it came in handy for scanning a little wonder-girl’s artwork to (literally) illustrate a point. Makes me feel so much more expressive (-: hears chorus, “as if he needs to!” :-) & complete. OBTW, Thandi’s recommendation of 4.3.2.1 appears to have tripled my weight-loss this last week, thanks again. Hmmm. Getting to thank that lass a fair bit now. Well... it does feel good. (-:

OK, down by ten whole kilograms now. Supermodel status next month. (-: Thandi’s looking leaner & fitter than ever, too (an achievement by itself, believe me), she doesn’t need a diet to attract blokes so much as a big, sharp, pointy stick to keep them at bay (-: or one to deputise with the task :-) Getting spoiled by this residence again. Little Adam has done something I wouldn’t have credited as possible: made me go all clucky. (-: The full-time ADSL has local (traffic not accounted) mirrors for both of the Linux distros I use (Mandriva, Ubuntu) & also wireless, so I’ve updated this laptop & also my desktop machine. The next person to squark about “the Asian invasion” gets laughed at by me, as yesterday the local Woollies elected to not open, but a little Viet supermarket next door was open & trading by 07:00. To the delight of a Diane at CentreLink, they also stocked Ginger Tea (as do the two in Girrawheen shops) & the usual miscellaneous collection of noodles &a

This isn’t very technical, but is very encouraging. (-: On the recommendation of a friend (whose children are very happy that she’s gone beyond complaining about being “fat” (if you knew her, you’d laugh, she causes accidents rather than jeering) to actually doing something about it), I’m trying some stuff named 4.3.2.1 which is a detox tea, available from pharmacies. Certain others with a (very rational) KFC aversion might also find it useful. The idea is to drink at least a litre of this stuff (suitably diluted with Adam’s Ale AKA H 2 O) each day for 10 days, which both ups your fluid intake & also does some digestive purging. It also has an interesting ingredient known as ogliofructose , which is a special kind of sugar (fructose) which skips your upper intestine & dissolves (gently) in your lower. As well as not making you fat, OF wipes out a number of nasty digestive lifeforms, helps diabetes sufferers, carts more soluble fibre down to the lower intestine, & is gener

Well, yes, I know that women do suddenly lose half a dozen kilos or so when giving birth, but that wasn’t what I had in mind. Yet. (-: Spent much of lunch-time yesterday giving two children (a 4yob & a nearly-6yog) “dizzy-whizzies” which was more or less fine until we actually ate lunch, after which the effort of keeping 20kg or so airborne for a few minutes at a time became kind of hard. Others (not related) were worried that the kinder might chuck, but they would’ve warned me (always have done so in time before) & I was more worried about me chucking. (-: Guessing I lost at least half a kilo in the process, & the munchkins undeniably enjoyed themselves. Oh, yes, & spent some time walking a 7-week-old around last night, which wasn’t near as exhausting but was very satisfying as his Mum & Dad both had a break (escaped the butterflies for over half an hour) as well as his small self actually relaxing & getting some very small Z’s out.

Found a unique use for squidGuard . Dynamic squidGuard ? Site management requires everything not-work-related to be blocked. A universal blockage, however, interferes with work-related activities. So what we’re doing is getting the Guard to redirect failures to a page with lists the blocked domain & asks the user if they want to enable it. The enabled domains get dumped into a database with the user ID & a timestamp, then added to the squidGuard conf file & squid kicked. Periodically, administrative staff review the enablements, & bin the ones they don’t like. The binned ones get remembered so future attempts to enable them are refused, & staff who are frivolously enabling stuff (like facebook, webmailers, ebay, youtube, photobucket etc) are told off. The Guard’s filtering rules are a bit more flexible than squid’s native stuff, plus it does the redirection itself.

I’ve run into another decent set of people, whose ISP (InterNode, & they’re on a RIM, so have a limited range of choices) also features a Mandriva mirror, so my laptop was able to do a monster update last night without banging on their quota. The cute little dogs are a bit inquisitive but the crying-age baby is a great little fellow. He cries with a tone that tells you that he’s impatient to be answered rather than in desperate despair — which is, in an odd way, quite relaxing. About a week ago, I misplaced an older-style tickey-type wristwatch, with no idea where it had vanished to. It popped out of the lost-pen wormhole yesterday, amongst a stack of collected paperwork. The laptop update was surprising large for a week or so, including cups, firefox, totem & a number of other medium-budget systems which all added up. My Ubuntu workstation has an antenna, & Internode mirrors them too, so tonight’s extravaganza will include updating that. It has a number of great games for

...who knew Linus. Very attractive blonde lass (blue eyes, clear skin, the whole enchilada) & a fit cyclist. She also knew that Linus was in fact Swede rather than Finn. Recognised Tux on my LCA2003 shirt. Spoke very clear English with just a little shadow of that Finnish bounce.

...all of whom condemn the idea. Hmmm. Not much point in having wide practical experience available, then ignoring it, is there? Psychiatrist told me that while my situation sucked (she used longer, politer words), I was managing it very well. It seems an unusual thing to be grateful for, but when your situation does indeed suck, anything truly positive is most welcome. This particular lady is very deeply insightful, so it was interesting to see her being fairly reticent about what she did say. Must also admit that the long stream of people being entirely honest with me (a few of them painfully so, but nevertheless as honest as they know how to be) is highly refreshing.

As I was packing up to leave Freo, a dear little old lady wandered in the door of 13-15 SomeRandom St, found the doorbells, & pressed #13, #14 & #15, reciting “13 to 15” as she did. Then she grew puzzled as she failed to find #46. I asked her who she was looking for, & her response was “the cardiac centre” — which matches one of the offices next door to the apartments. Office #46, in fact. A resident of one of the apartments, summoned by the doorbell, then came on air & also proceeded to explain that the cardiac centre was next door. The building’s number, 13-15, is emblazoned on the wall outside the apartments’ entrance, & not the office entrances. The carpark, at the #15 end of the building, has a tasteful “#13” tag, & the elevator, at the #13 end, proclaims itself to be of #15. Numbers without number. Worse than FoCal. (-:

The ethernet interface built into the motherboard of a PC failed a few weeks ago, so I plugged a new $10 one into a PCI slot & all was happy again. Then the switch the PC was plugged into (a 15yo KingMax) died, & actually shut down (not killed) every ethernet interface plugged into it (each device needed power cycling to fix) so I grabbed a new $25 TP-Link switch & plugged everything through that. No worries. A day later, the dead motherboard interface revived itself, but of course was not plugged into the switch so failed to connect. Figuring out that the flaming thing had fixed itself took me nearly an hour. )-: Harbouring dark suspicions, I’ve left the PCI card in place for an easy fix next time (hmmm, should have taken an extra Cat5 cable along to plug it in also). Meanwhile, back at health, events which I shall not describe have turned my hair reasonably grey. A friend recommended — for unrelated reasons — that I take B6, B12, Folic Acid, E & I threw in some garlic

Had a user want to switch their box across from Ubuntu to MS-Windows today, & they were annoyed when a supplier wanted to charge them $300.00 for the trouble & looked for “the original CDs.” It turned out that the PC was perfectly fine, but that the little, old (~15 years) switch plugging the whole lot together had died. Not only died, but shut down the PC’s ethernet card as well. Oh, & the ADSL router’s interface. Plugging the PC direct into the ADSL router, factory-resetting that & rebooting the PC made it all work again... except that neither the VoIP ’phone interface nor the wireless router (needed to reach another user’s laptop) can talk until the switch is replaced. So... why did the user want to put MS-Windows in? AFAICT, because that’s all the technician they called in understood, & they’d been told by someone else that MS-Windows was the only good thing. The someone else had said it partly to cause me trouble, & partly because, according to friends of t